While the GDPR has extraterritoriality, you are over-reaching here.

Tea can collect and use photos of EU citizens, if it collected them in the USA, with (all other things being equal) no fear of GDPR violations.

So, yes Facebook can't collect photos of EU citizens, then process and do "stuff" with them in the USA, without violating GDPR, because that'd be the easiest out ever for multinational tech companies.

It is the location of the subject of the personal data collection that matters, not their citizenship.

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laughing_man 4 days ago | parent [-]

Facebook can't do it because Facebook has a legal presence in Europe and does business with European advertisers and financial companies. If a business doesn't have, and doesn't want, that presence it can ignore GDPR.

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Quarrel 4 days ago | parent [-]

No. Tea can have no legal presence in the EU, but if it collects data from people in the EU at the time of collection, then it is caught be GDPR. It would be offering services to people in the EU in this case, and so has to deal with their laws, including privacy and consumer protections.

Steam tried this stuff on in Australia too, saying it had no presence there, but still sold games to Australians. In particular, they didn't want to honour Australia's consumer rights laws regarding refunds. They fought hard in the courts and lost, and it improved steam for almost everyone.

Big tech try on these jurisdiction arguments all the time, but they've repeatedly failed where you are selling goods to, or providing services to, people in those jurisdictions. The US does the same thing. If you sell or provide services to someone in XX state, you need to abide by the consumer laws (and maybe privacy if it is a state like CA) of that state.

This is one of the reasons paypal and Escrow.com have had a competitive advantage. It is hard getting money transmission / escrow licenses in all 50 states like they do. There are many such examples.

	▲	laughing_man 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, it may be in violation of the GDPR, but European law doesn't have jurisdiction in the US. It literally doesn't matter unless they don't want to give up their European paid subscriptions. Valve did not want to give up its Australian income stream, which is why it went to court.